


Alone Together

by SnitchesAndTalkers



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: COVID-19, Fluff, M/M, Quarantine, Tumblr Prompt, Zoom calls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:42:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23756338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SnitchesAndTalkers/pseuds/SnitchesAndTalkers
Summary: Patrick works tech support at Clandestine Industries. The boss is, like, unspeakably hot. And awful with technology.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 64
Kudos: 163





	Alone Together

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, my lovelies! I've vomited this up over the past couple of days because I read a prompt on tumblr and could _not_ get it out of my head. It's very fluffy, with very little reference to the actual virus outside of being cooped up at home and meeting new people thanks to video-conferencing. It helped me a lot to write this down, I hope you enjoy reading it.

Patrick’s computer plays a jaunty little tune at eleven on a Tuesday morning. 

For a second he’s bewildered, can’t place it at all until he realises it’s Zoom. By extension, this means someone wants to talk to him. To see him at his tiny Ikea kitchen table, dressed in a coffee-stained shirt and a week’s worth of brassy stubble. The noise is familiar but in the way Robert Downey Jnr’s voice is familiar on TV, but out of place in Patrick’s kitchen, next to his toaster and his microwave and his cabinet full of dehydrated carbs. He’s tech support, which means he makes a lot of Zoom calls but doesn’t receive very many. 

The icon says Pete Wentz and he stops, temporarily frozen with secondhand embarrassment because there’s no way — no way at all — that the CEO meant to call  _ him. _

Him. Patrick Stumph. 

Him. Lowly tech support, possessor of encyclopaedic knowledge of Microsoft Excel and frequent user of the phrase ‘Have you tried switching it off and on again.’ 

Patrick’s teeth ache with the anticipation of Pete’s lovely, confused face when he’s confronted with Patrick, his shirt rumpled from the laundry hamper and previous wear. Cornered like a small and frightened prey animal, he takes a deep breath and hits accept. 

“Mr. Wentz, good morning.”

“Hi,” Pete Wentz says, smiling. If he’s revulsed by Patrick’s appearance, he does an excellent job of not flinching at all. “Patrick… Stumph, yeah? Did I get that right?”

Patrick blinks at the screen and is blindsided — possibly actually  _ blinded _ — by the Cat 5 force of Pete Wentz’s megawatt smile. 

“Yep,” Patrick says, like a normal person. He adds, “Like a tree. Or, like, a small protrusion,” because he’s a socially inept idiot. 

Patrick bites his lip and stares into the middle distance, horrified for a second by his own continued existence. If Pete picks up on the obvious, if accidental, double entendre he does a fantastic job of not reacting. 

“Awesome,” Pete says.

Okay, but. But. The thing is. 

Pete is — Patrick pauses and takes a deep breath and looks at the screen — Pete is  _ lovely. _ Astonishingly so. The publicity shots for the company do him a terrible disservice, which is unfair because he’s  _ gorgeous  _ in the publicity shots. On Zoom, breathing and smiling and wearing a crisp black Oxford shirt, he looks like a Webster’s illustration for handsome.  _ Fuckable; ˈfʌkəbl, see attached reference image.  _ Patrick takes a deep breath and realises he’s staring, his mouth sagging open like Skeevy McSkeeverton of Skeevington Lane. 

“Did you call the wrong person?” Patrick asks. He speaks quickly, his voice sliding out of his mouth like it’s slipping over wet tiles or uneven ground. “I can put you through to someone else.”

Pete blinks, honey-slow. “No. I don’t think so. Tech support, right? You support my tech?”

“I — yeah. I am a Supporter of Tech, I guess. But, like, at a much lower level. I’m mid-level tech support. I support the people who don’t matter. If this were Snowpiercer, I’d be picking roaches out of the bug-crushing machine, not feeding small children into the engine. Or something. God, that was a horrible analogy. Please, ignore me.”

Patrick sucks in a deep breath and forces himself to stop talking. His embarrassment is so palpable he can slosh around in it like bathwater. He bites the inside of his cheek until it throbs and waits for Pete to speak, or hang up, or possibly fire him for gross idiocy. 

“Everyone at Clandestine matters,” Pete says. “We’re a corporate family.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. 

“Stumph,” Pete continues. “Interesting name — is it Irish?”

“German, I think,” Patrick says vaguely. 

“Nice,” Pete beams approvingly, like Patrick is very clever to have a German last name. 

This is surreal. Any second now, Salvador Dali and Max Ernst are going to appear from the pantry and two-step across Patrick’s kitchen, throwing Cheerios as confetti. He won’t even blink if they do. 

“Anyway,” Patrick says, blushing like an idiot. “Can I help you with something, Mr. Wentz?”

Everything in Pete’s office is white: white walls, white desk, white chair. Pete stands out like a streak of dark oil paint on a canvas. He takes a deliberate sip from a neat white coffee cup, leaves his lips wet and pink as petals. Patrick watches Pete’s shiny mouth first, then his throat as he swallows. He hopes that precisely what he’s looking at is unclear on the other end of the webcam. 

“Pete is fine,” Pete says, waving a hand and clicking his coffee cup down onto a coaster. “Patrick Stumph, you are exactly the kind of man I need in my life right now.”

Patrick swallows heavily and doesn’t allow that thought to go anywhere. Cut that one right off. Curl the ends like ribbon. “Uh, I am?” he asks doubtfully. 

Pete leans in close to the camera which makes his lovely eyes even lovelier. They’re so many different shades of green and gold and light golden brown. Patrick thinks of things like ambergris and whisky and lily-ponds-at-sunset. He could get lost counting the colours. 

“I have no idea how to set up a meeting through Zoom and I don’t want the other execs to laugh at me,” Pete whispers. “It’s like high school, Patrick Stumph. Or more like sharks. They smell weakness like blood in the waves. Would you be an  _ angel _ and talk me through it?”

If Patrick has an opinion on the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation having no idea how to set up a Zoom meeting, he elects not to say it out loud. If he wants Pete to call him an angel again, he’ll bite out his own tongue before he verbalises it. It feels like having his heart warmed with blankets fresh from the dryer. It feels like a back rub for the soul. He rolls around in it and reminds himself he’s just touch-starved. Not even by the shelter-in-place order. The length of time since he last got laid is best measured in dog years, lest it sound too tragic. 

“Okay,” he says, hoping Pete doesn’t notice the dry rasp at the back of his throat. “Is Zoom open on your machine? I’m going to need you to make a list of people you want to attend. Did you send out an invitation by email yet…?”

Ten minutes later, Pete smiles at Patrick like he hung the moon. Patrick feels a little dazed in the face of it, a little like he’s staring into the sun through a magnifying glass. He smiles back helplessly and adjusts his glasses. 

“You are a-ma-zing, thank you  _ so  _ much,” Pete says, sounding heartfelt and lovely and a tiny bit post-coital in his earnestness. Patrick’s not the kind of man to add work-related praise to his spank bank, but if he was? This would be top five, easily. 

“It’s my job,” Patrick shrugs, pleased with himself and basking in the springtime melt of Pete’s smile. “Happy to help.”

“I should let you get back to your wife,” Pete says. 

“Oh, I’m not married,” Patrick says, a blush creeping over the crests of his cheekbones. Patrick’s heart stammers in his chest, the nervous public speaker of ridiculous internal organs.

“Girlfriend, then.”

“Uh. Nope.”

“Cousin? Mom? Roommate named Randal? Socialist commune? Utopian  _ Res Publica _ in the NorCal wine region?”

“I live alone,” Patrick says. “I’m gay,” he adds, and wonders at the biological logistics of biting out his own tongue. 

If Patrick were religious — which he’s not — he’d pray for a lightning bolt to turn his bones to ash and his tongue to steam. He sends out a hopeful ‘what’s up’ to any deities that might be paying attention. Nothing happens. 

Pete’s smile turns a little wolfy in the corners. He leans closer, his chin propped on his fist. “Patrick Stumph,” he drawls. “How are  _ you _ single.”

Patrick is very aware of the blood pounding behind his temples, the crimson route it maps over his cheekbones, down his throat and under his shirt collar. The back of his hands, the tips of his fingers, both pink. Pete smiles curls, lazy as a river. He’s movie star handsome. The kind of handsome that shouldn’t exist outside of theatre screens and the front cover of GQ. A tuft or two of thick, dark hair escapes from his businesslike man bun. It’s so charming Patrick could scream, or laugh. Or grab it in big, tufty handfuls and see exactly how messy he can make it. Nope. Bite that thought right off like an Icee. Let it melt against his tongue and drown him before he says it out loud.

Patrick takes a shaky breath. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Mr. Wentz?”

“Not right now,” Pete says, shaking his head. “Can I call you again, though? I mean, like, if I have any more problems with Zoom or something?” 

Patrick looks off to the side and takes counsel from the ageing rubber plant on his kitchen counter. On the one hand, yes, he would very much welcome any future calls from Pete. This is because he’s a sad man, starved for human interaction. The rubber plant bristles; there’s a very clear company directorate that Pete reports tech issues to his  _ own _ tech support team. To put not too fine a point on it, Patrick will get into  _ so much trouble _ if he circumnavigates the chain of command. Still — nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

“Sure,” he says, avoiding the glare of the dusty rubber plant. “That’s totally fine by me.”

Patrick’s apartment seems to be getting smaller. It was always small, always compact, even by the standards with which square-footage is measured for single occupants in Los Angeles County. But it seems to be shrinking. Like something out of Harry Potter or a Stephen King novel. Patrick paces from one side of his kitchen to the other and thinks, possibly, he has to take one less step than he did the day before. He looks out of the window. The streets of Echo Park are very quiet. 

He paces the other rooms, just to check. They seem fine, but he side-eyes the bathroom. Makes sure it doesn’t get any ideas. It’s small enough as it is. “Do  _ not _ shrink,” he tells it, severely. The shower head drips and seems unthreatened. 

It starts to feel like the walls might be playing tricks on him. Or the apartment building itself. Patrick hasn’t been outside in a while and he’s going a little bit weird with it, fraying around the edges like a well-worn rug. He drinks a glass of water and feels calmer. The cabinets look empty. Shopping, then. He has to go shopping.

He grabs his jacket. 

Pete calls two days later, when Patrick’s finishing a lunch of packet ramen and chopped hot dogs. A handful of sliced scallions is his only nod to the nutritional value of vegetables, the avoidance of scurvy and a mouthful of rotten black teeth. Patrick swallows the last of his broth and hits accept. “Mr. Wentz,” he says, wiping his mouth on the back of his wrist. “Hi.”

“Pete,” Pete greets him. “And I’ll call you Patrick.”

“Pete,” Patrick repeats. 

“Patrick,” Pete says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. He is no less lovely on second viewing. “Okay, so. Email.” Pete makes a big, blocky gesture with his hands. “The importmentation of the same. Tell me everything you know.”

Today, Pete’s wearing a charcoal shirt with tiny, pearly buttons. A shank of slippery-looking hair has worked its way entirely loose from his bun and provides a frame for his left cheekbone. Patrick’s shirt has a hole in the armpit. He makes note not to raise his arms.

Patrick says, “Importmentation isn’t a word. I know  _ that _ for a fact.” 

“Are you sure?” Pete frowns. 

“Like, ninety-nine-point-nine percent,” Patrick nods. 

“It sounds like a word. The act of importing.”

“That’s the word. Right there. Importing. You want to know about  _ importing _ email.”

Pete sits back in his chair and looks at Patrick with a raised eyebrow. “You know, you could stop being my favourite tech support very easily,” he says.

“I’m not your favourite,” Patrick objects. 

“Are too,” Pete says, smiling. “I see a lot of faces on my computer screen every day, but I like your face the best.”

Patrick feels a lurch in the pit of his stomach. That’ll be the crush cementing itself, then. Falling into place less like a puzzle piece and more like a grand piano crashing onto the sidewalk from a great height. The pavement shrugs it off but the piano is smashed to pieces. In this situation, Patrick is the piano. Fucking brilliant. 

“Importing actual emails into a drive?” Patrick asks brightly, ignoring the urge to examine every one of Pete’s facial features in detail, to commit them to memory. “Or importing attachments only?”

Pete pulls a face and makes a distressed porg noise. “Uh, shall we say both? Do you have time for me to say both?”

_ You are literally signing my paycheck,  _ Patrick thinks. It’s not  _ un- _ charming, though. The concern. The concept that Patrick’s time is something not to be wasted by Pete Wentz. It settles on him, fitting snug as a ring on his finger. Patrick looks into the camera and says, “I can spare you ten whole minutes, Wentz. And not a second more.”

Pete laughs. It’s a dorky laugh, which addresses the cosmic balance of his beautiful face somewhat. 

“Okay, give me the crash course,” Pete says, leaning closer to the camera. Patrick leans closer, too. It makes it feel like natural conversation. “Flip me over and  _ stuff  _ me full of your knowledge.”

Pete leers, a precise and knowing expression crossing his face that suggests he knows  _ exactly _ what he’s doing. There’s something wedged in Patrick’s throat like dry bread. “That’s sexual harassment,” he says, feeling bold and reckless and stupid. “There’s a whole chapter in the employee handbook about it.”

Pete feigns surprise. “There is?”

“You’d know if you went to the meeting with the nice lady from HR.”

Pete grins. “Tell your boss,” he retorts. 

After thirty minutes and a shared cup of coffee, Patrick begins to suspect that Pete knows more about computers than he’s letting on. He doesn’t say anything, though. He adjusts his shirt collar and smiles and tries to ignore his own ridiculous face smiling at him from the screen. 

“Do you get it now?” Patrick asks.

“Importmentation? Absolutely,” Pete says. “I googled it, by the way. While you were talking. The National Nuclear Security Administration uses it. That means it’s totally a word.”

“I can’t believe you stopped listening to me to prove you were right about a word you made up,” Patrick says. 

Pete’s smile outshines the stars, distant galaxies, the bright LA sun. “I think this means I win.”

“Bull _ shit.” _ Patrick cannot believe he is arguing with the CEO. “One use is coincidental. Give me Webster’s or go home.”

“Call it a draw?” Pete asks.

“Never,” Patrick grins. 

Pete laughs like a fist thrust into the air. Patrick smiles back, nerdy, and wonders if they’ll ever spend time in the same physical space, breathing the same air. He stops thinking  _ that  _ immediately.

“Is that a Cubs pennant on the wall behind you? ” Pete asks, squinting. “Are you from Chicago?”

It’s a lovely squint, a showcase of sexy crow’s feet. Does everything Pete does  _ have _ to be so effortless? So perfect? Would it kill him to suck at something? Patrick will include this complaint in his annual employee review.  _ Be less sexy, Mr. Wentz.  _ He will sound normal and totally not insane. 

“Earth to Patrick. Come in, Patrick.”

“What?” Patrick looks over his shoulder. “Oh. Yeah. I mean, it’s a Cubs pennant  _ and  _ I’m from Chicago.”

“Me too!” Pete exclaims, looking delighted. “This explains so much. We have a  _ connection,  _ Patrick Stumph, don’t you feel it?”

_ I know where you’re from, you absolute lunatic, literally everyone in Chicago knows you’re from Chicago, _ Patrick almost says, tastes it at the tip of his tongue. He swallows it down and forces himself to look surprised. The tiny Patrick on the laptop screen looks like he’s forcing hot rocks down his gullet. The big Patrick at the kitchen table tries to unclench. 

“Right,” he says. “But, like, do not ask me about baseball. You can ask me about Chicago, I  _ love _ Chicago, but. I don’t sport. I’m just a big fan of socially-mandated hot dogs and the national anthem.”

“Oh, say can you  _ see…” _

Okay, so, singing. Singing is a thing Pete is not good at. Patrick winces.

“Please stop it,” Patrick begs. 

Pete rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Oh, like you could do any better, my friend.”

“ _ By the dawn’s early light,”  _ Patrick belts out, feeling silly and noticed and  _ happy,  _ for once. 

Pete’s mouth forms a soft round in the centre of his face. He blinks, rapidly, several times. He says, “ _ Patrick,” _ his voice a breathy whisper. “Patrick, what the fucking  _ fuck?” _

Patrick trails off and sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. He blushes so fiercely that city authorities could park him on top of the Wilshire Grand Center and use him to guide low-flying aircraft into LAX. It’s one of those things, singing. Something Patrick would like to be good at but finding out involves singing. In front of other people. Which is bad enough, seriously, but what if he’s  _ not _ good? 

Here’s the thing: If Patrick never sings in public, then he remains a singer in his heart. If he belts out a tune to a crowd and, it turns out, he’s summarily  _ awful, _ then he’s just tech support. This is the kind of thing that kept him awake at night, until he had pandemic statistics and infection rates to keep him awake at night, instead. 

“Sorry,” he says quietly. “This is why I don’t sing in public.”

“It is a  _ travesty _ that you don’t sing in public,” Pete says, with feeling. “You should sing  _ all  _ the time.”

“I should probably…” Patrick trails off.  _ Curl up and die somewhere, _ he adds silently. 

“Call you tomorrow?” Pete asks casually. “I have, uh — a work thing. I could use your help setting it up.”

“You know, you have your own tech support,” Patrick points out. “They’re better than I am.”

“I like  _ you,” _ Pete insists. 

Patrick thinks about  _ that _ through three episodes of Tiger King and a dinner of three handfuls of puppy chow and a microwave burrito. 

There are four windows in Patrick’s apartment and none of them open more than two inches. That’s the trade-off between housing quality and location. There’s not enough air in the kitchen and the central air is fussy and he wants to go to his usual cafe on the corner and sit at his usual table and order a honey-lemon tea. He wants to rest his notebook in his lap and scribble down melodies as they occur to him. Watch people. Go for drinks. Hell, he’d take a trip to Ikea at this point. He needs more spoons.

He makes a mental note to drive out to Burbank when this is over. 

_ If _ this is ever over. 

It’s after three when Pete calls, and Patrick is in the middle of a meeting that may never end. It’s been three hours. Like Sisyphus, Patrick fears he’s doomed to spend the rest of his lockdown, possibly the rest of his  _ life, _ listening to his supervisor insist that they should be tracking video call use. The meeting is in Teams, so Patrick can only see four faces at once, two of which he doesn’t know, and everyone keeps talking over one another, and honestly? He thought the apocalypse would be sexier than this. He sighs and stares out of the window.

“It’s an invasion of privacy,” says Joe from Patrick’s office. Joe is wearing a Simpsons t-shirt and looks around three weeks past-due a haircut. Experience tells Patrick that Joe will smell faintly of sweat, strongly of weed, that there’s a post-it note stuck over his webcam between mandatory meetings and that he has no idea there’s a small child performing some kind of ritual with a headless Barbie six feet behind him. 

“No one signed up for privacy,” Shane, their supervisor, says with aggression. 

“We’re American,” Hayley chimes in. “We all signed up for privacy. It’s, like, in the constitution or something.”

“The founding fathers did not predict the future use of Zoom for social calls on company time.”

“Look, can we try  _ not _ to use this opportunity to go all tinpot dictator?” Gabe asks. Like Joe, he probably smells of weed, but also of neon marker and cheap nylon and expensive cologne. 

An incoming call notification pops up on the corner of the screen. It’s Pete, a man with the worst timing in the world. Patrick watches it flash and feels compelled to answer, his cursor hovering over the button. It’s important, really. Answering the CEO. If he said ‘Sorry, I’ve got an incoming call from Mr. Wentz,’ then there isn’t much Shane could  _ do _ about it, not really. But then Patrick would have to explain why Pete is calling him. He watches Pete end the call. It’s okay, there are other tech support managers in the company. Pete can call the helpdesk, like he should’ve done the first time. 

When the meeting ends, Patrick looks at Pete’s name in his missed call notifications. The circle next to his name is grey. His finger hovers over the mouse button. It’s not creepy, Pete called  _ him. _ It would be polite to return the call, even though it’s almost five. There could be a company emergency. This call could prevent mass lay-offs, lost mortgages, broken families. Patrick sighs, and begins closing down windows on his desktop. 

The circle turns green. 

Patrick clicks without thinking about it. He experiences caller’s regret so immediate he thinks he’s having an aneurysm, or an acute respiratory episode. There is no inhaler in medical production that can deal with the way his lungs seize as the screen lights up and Pete appears, his smile as wide as Sunset Boulevard.

“Patrick Stumph!” he says, sounding delighted. “I missed you earlier. Both in the sense that you didn’t answer, so we, like, physically missed one another. And also in the sense that I missed seeing you because you’re still my favourite employee.”

Patrick blinks and allows his limbic system to recalibrate to  _ that. _ “I thought I was just your favourite tech support.”

“You got upgraded,” Pete says. He’s still dressed impeccably in a button down with the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms dark with Los Angeles sun and ink. “I had a little tech issue. Got it fixed, though.”

“You cheated on me with the help desk?” Patrick asks.

“I googled it,” Pete says. “It turns out, it was an easy fix. I’ll keep  _ you _ for the hard stuff.”

The double entendre writes itself. Patrick breathes slowly through his mouth. “Do I get a bonus?” he asks. “Since I’m your favourite?”

“Only if you spend the next thirty minutes explaining to me why I can’t get to the design directory when I’m working remotely.”

Patrick pops his knuckles one by one and smiles wolfishly. “Deal. One question, though.”

Pete hums softly. “Mm?”

“How come you’re always, like, dressed for a business meeting. We’re stuck indoors for the foreseeable. If you’re living the apocalypse in anything but your jammies, are you really living it at all?”

Pete’s smile curls up at one corner. “If I tell you a secret, does it stay between us?”

“Uh, sure.”

“I’m totally down to my boxers under the desk. Have been the whole time. Hot, right?”

“No,” Patrick says quickly, imagining dark and shadowy blowjobs in under desk spaces, the humid smell of Pete’s crotch, Pete’s hands twisted in his hair. “Not hot at all. Unhygienic, in fact.”

Patrick is lying. It’s so fucking hot. 

“And if you do  _ that, _ you’ll find it much easier to access the design directory, see?”

On the other side of the city — world, solar system,  _ galaxy _ — Pete tips his chin into his hand and smiles. “Awesome. Okay, enough about work.”

“Oh,” Patrick says. He feels stupid. He chases down what to say next but it slips through his fingers, leaves him clutching at pointless verb-sounds like droplets clinging to his hands. “Uh. I’ll just. Um.”

“Who’s that in the picture?” Pete says. 

Patrick needs to find  _ somewhere  _ in his four-hundred square feet of living space that does  _ not  _ offer Zoom callers an intimate tour of his personal belongings. The bathroom, maybe. He could take calls on the toilet for an added layer of social discomfort. He turns in his seat and looks at the picture on the bureau. It’s Patrick, his arm around the shoulders of an attractive woman with blonde curls.

“Me,” he says, impish, knowing exactly what Pete means but enjoying the thread of… jealousy? Is Pete  _ jealous? _ “A thinner me from a while ago, but it’s me.”

“Patrick, I know it’s  _ you,” _ Pete says, rolling his eyes. “And for what it’s worth, you look  _ great _ now. Very soft—”

“Like a sofa?”

“—very  _ handsome.  _ Shut up. Who’s the lady?” He pronounces it  _ lay-dee _ and waggles his eyebrows. He’s so dorky Patrick could die. 

“Greta,” Patrick says, filing away that notion that Pete called him handsome for analysis when he can’t sleep at two in the morning. “She’s my partner.”

“You said you were single. And gay.”

“Oh, not that kind of partner! She’s an old-fashioned lounge singer, all the fancy places, and I play the guitar and the piano and, like, a couple of other things. Sometimes, if she can’t find a band, she asks me to help out.”

Pete’s eyes are very wide, the coppery bottoms of twin beer bottles. “Oh, Patrick,” he says. “You’re such an  _ enigma. _ You’re a travelling bard.”

“That’s so far from what I am.”

“Would you play the piano for me?”

Patrick swings his laptop around to give Pete the grand tour of his tiny, mouse-like living space. “I am not set up for pianos,” he deadpans. “I’m barely equipped to house Charlie Brown’s piano. I can mime playing the piano for you on my mass-produced Scandinavian dining table. Would you like to pretend to listen to Schubert, or Bach?”

“I see a guitar,” Pete says. Pete is so obnoxious and Patrick is such an idiot for revealing literally  _ every single thing in his house _ with one swing of his laptop. 

Patrick looks at him. “No.”

Pete gives him a beguiling set of puppy dog eyes. “Come on, please? I’ve been starved of live music, and, like, basic human interaction for over a month. Play me a song.”

“No.”

“Please? Please, please, please, please, please, please,  _ please? _ Please, Patrick? Pretty please? Pleeease?”

There’s a small but insistent voice that whispers in Patrick’s ear. It informs him he’ll never say no to Pete and mean it, so he might as well get this over with. He sighs and rises to his feet, grabs his guitar and sits back down. He strums with malice. The look he gives Pete is loaded with ill will. “Any requests?”

“Ride the Lightning,” Pete says immediately. Patrick’s scowl pops through several nationally recognised danger-ranking categories. “I’m kidding, play whatever you want.”

Patrick plays Through Being Cool. A tiny hit of nostalgia, sweet and sticky as jam on a spoon. A throwback to being sixteen and playing in his mom’s basement and wondering what it might be like to join a band. He plays it because he likes the line  _ I’ll see the way the world begins to need colour everywhere, and I’ll realise how small I really am. _ Because he feels that way right now. Because he wants to inject some brightness into the awfulness that’s going on outside. When he finishes, Pete stares at him from wide eyes and whispers, “Oh my God. You’re a musical  _ genius.” _

His crush grows, unlike the dusty rubber plant on the counter. Small green shoots of hopeful feeling that he can curl through the emptier LA streets and wrap around Pete. 

“Totally,” Patrick agrees laconically. “I’m ordering takeout — want to join me?”

Pete holds up his phone and shows the UberEats app. “Burritos or pizza?”

They order the same toppings, from the same restaurant, and hang up when it arrives. 

Someone in the building across the street plays the double bass, windows thrown open. Gorgeous notes, big and bold, that squeeze through the cracks in Patrick’s windows. He goes to the store and buys grease for the hinges, spends an hour or two working open the French windows in the living room that lead onto the Juliet balcony. Patrick writes  _ wanna jam l8r? _ on a towel in sharpie and hangs it from his balcony railing.  _ YES,  _ they paste on an unfolded Amazon delivery box,  _ 8 IS GUD. _

Full of wine and hubris, Patrick plugs in his amp at 7:55. He looks out of his window — Bass Lady waves from across the street. “Good Vibrations?” she shouts.

“Corny,” Patrick calls back good-naturedly. 

“The world needs good vibes,” she says. 

Patrick’s eighty-nine-percent sure he’s going to wind up with angry neighbours at best, a noise violation and a visit from LAPD at worst. He’s not expecting people to clap. He doesn’t know what to do when they sing. When they come to their windows with pots and pans and actual instruments and kids are dancing on balconies and this becomes a community  _ thing, _ like he’s seen on Good Morning America. 

That’s the thing about lockdown, he thinks, launching into Queen. 

Everyone’s looking for a way to feel close to somebody else. 

“Oh. My God,” Patrick says, averting his eyes when Pete pops onto the screen. 

Aversion lasts for three seconds, absolute tops, then Patrick looks back.

Pete is glistening. Less like a Christmas ham and more like a tasteful slow-motion Baywatch sequence. There’s a lot of shirtless chest, lightly curled with dark hair across firm pecs, narrowing like a knocked arrow over tight abs and toward the waistband of a pair of basketball shorts that manage to straddle the line between baggy and revealing. His sweaty hair curls over his ears and against his brow. He is glowing and breathless and  _ exactly _ how Patrick imagines he looks thoroughly fucked. 

Patrick is also fucked, and trying to pretend he’s not blushing from his brow to his crotch. It’s not embarrassment, it’s a natural reaction to every blood cell in his body abandoning his brain and rushing to his dick like his dorsal vein is the 405 at rush hour. And Pete is so pretty that, honestly, Patrick would need to look into erectile dysfunction if he  _ wasn’t _ sporting a half-chub. “Nngh,” Patrick says softly. 

“Hey,” Pete says, struggling into a plain white v neck, so for a second Patrick can see his dark nipples, his navel, his crotch outlined through thin polyester — note  _ that _ for future sessions of self-gratification — but not his eyes. “Sorry about that, Andy just got done with me.”

Patrick has no idea who Andy is, but knows he hates him with an intensity that burns like phosphorus. “I don’t need to know the details,” Patrick says primly, in an act of self-preservation. “Please keep them to yourself.”

Pete looks confused. “He’s my personal trainer. He’s bored, so he’s set up a daily exercise class for anyone in the company who wants to join in.” Patrick can hear his heartbeat against his ear drums. “It’s pretty intense, I think he’s trying to kill me. You could—”

“No,” Patrick says firmly, before Pete can bewitch him into jiggling his way to a heart attack. “I make it my business to not sport. Ever.”

Pete mutters something into his white t-shirt. Something that sounds like, “Bet  _ I _ could make you sweat,” that Patrick chooses to ignore because Patrick is clearly suffering from auditory hallucinations as a result of living in his own company for so long. “Patrick Stumph,” Pete says, smoothing down his shirt over his glorious, sweaty, sweatily glorious body. “Do you think you could help me work out what the fuck Travie is talking about when he tells me something is waiting in my drop box. It sounds dirty, but I don’t think it is.”

Patrick looks at Pete and Patrick says something that’s been on his mind for a while. “You’re not as bad at computer stuff as you pretend to be,” he says casually.

“I am  _ so _ bad,” Pete tells him, laughing. “I’m the worst.

Patrick connects to Pete’s device without warning and clicks on the open drop box window. “Oh, look at that. Right here. Beginner’s luck?”

Pete’s brows knit in sexy feigned confusion. “Oh,” he says. “Is that it? I had no idea.”

“Hmm,” Patrick says. Now isn’t the time to examine the facts of that. The truth that Pete knows exactly how to carry out these simple administrative tasks but pretends so he can — No. Everyone is lonely. Everyone is grasping for human company in this strange new world of isolation. Maybe Pete can put on a front with Patrick, hide his vulnerabilities with heavy-handed flirting. Then, when this is over, he never has to see Patrick again. 

The thought makes him sadder than it should. Patrick, maker of excellent decisions, says, “So, it’s almost dinner time. Want to hang with me while I cook?”

“Yes,” Pete says, quickly, sharply, a full stop of a word. “What’re we having? We should eat the same thing, Patrick Stumph, then it’s — then it’s almost real.”

Patrick laughs. “I was gonna make spaghetti,” he says, imagining Pete’s mouth red with tomatoes. “Is that okay with you?”

“Okay,” Pete says. “But you have to add garlic. It’s not fair if I smell and you don’t.”

“You’re many miles away from me, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t matter.”

“It does. Otherwise it’s not  _ real.” _

Pete sets the camera down on the counter and climbs on a chair to rummage through cabinets. Patrick is now eye-level with his crotch, a vantage-point he enjoys, silently, and then feels creepy about. There’s a lot on display, is the thing. There’s a very real possibility that Pete’s not wearing underwear and his basketball shorts are thin to the point of indecency and is it hot in here? Like, ridiculously, suddenly, awfully hot? Should they take Nelly’s time-honoured advice re: the taking off of clothes? Palms and throat slick with sweat, Patrick busies himself by stuffing his head in the refrigerator where it’s cold and God can’t judge him. 

“Hmm,” Pete hums. “Okay, so. I have mac and cheese, marinara and Italian sausage, ooh! Or hamburger helper!”

Patrick stops looking through his refrigerator. He looks at Pete, instead. He hums. It comes out far more  _ judgy _ than he intends. 

“What?” Pete asks. He looks at the onion in Patrick’s hand. His eyes widen with sudden recognition. “Oh. You’re like,  _ making _ spaghetti. Right. This is cool. Very Martha Stewart. We’re doing this, like — like fucking  _ mountain men.” _

Patrick smiles, and it feels decidedly gooey and fond and boyfriendish. “You have no idea how to make spaghetti sauce, do you?”

“I do not.”

“Your parents should be ashamed.” 

“Oh, don’t worry, they are,” Pete tells him with earnest. “For, like,  _ so  _ many reasons.”

Patrick brandishes a stock pot in Pete’s direction. “Okay, hotshot. Do you have tomatoes? Onion? Garlic?”

Pete stuffs his head into a cabinet and emerges with a can of tomatoes. “Good enough?”

Patrick nods. “Good enough.”

“Alright, let’s do this.” Pete piles his hair up at the back of his head, secures it with an elastic tie from his wrist. “Patrick Stump, you can make me a man.”

Struck with the sudden and violent imagery of Pete Wentz in lingerie, heels and full Dr. Frank N. Furter make-up, Patrick drops the stock pot onto his toes. His yelp hits something beyond the recorded vocal register. Bruce Dickinson would consider it a bit much.

“Careful,” Pete says easily, raising an eyebrow. 

Patrick sloshes red wine into a glass and takes an aggressive swig. Zoom calls negate any-and-all psychological studies about the impact of drinking alone, and that’s just facts. 

They sit down an hour later. Patrick’s sunk most of a bottle of red to himself and his face feels hot because of alcohol and not because of tingly, below-the-waist feelings. Pete twirls spaghetti around his fork and splashes his shirt with sauce. He gives Patrick a long, lingering look and then shoves it in his mouth in a way that confuses Patrick’s lonely, sex-starved penis. He apologises to his dick, silently, for reducing the thing to pasta-based gratification. Pete chews, swallows, licks his lips. 

“I’ll drink to this,” he says, and raises his glass. 

Patrick raises his own in response. They eat, then move to their respective couches. They talk until after eleven, about Chicago and music and the first thing they’re going to do when this is over.  _ Go to Ikea, _ Patrick says, looking thoughtfully at his ceiling.  _ Touch,  _ Pete says simply, with a meaningful look at what  _ seems _ to be Patrick’s mouth, but, like,  _ obviously _ isn’t.

Patrick’s drunk and irrational and obsessively dissecting the idea of Pete calling him every day. This is no longer a Work Thing. This is social and cozy and lightly flirtatious. As a man with a degree in computer science, Patrick knows that the most obvious answer is usually the correct one. Patrick also knows what he sees when he looks in the mirror. It’s baffling. He is  _ baffled. _

This seemed sexier in Romance novels. Long-distance longing  _ sucks.  _

Patrick sleeps more. For no other reason than he has nothing better to do.

He watches the news on his television until he can’t stand it any longer. He takes out his phone and listens to comedy podcasts. After a while, he finds he can’t bear that, either, and he reads the news on the phone instead, like the impact is lessened in correlation to screen size. 

The world is, according to the news, a terrifying place on the brink of social collapse. When Patrick goes to the store, he knocks on the doors of his elderly neighbours and asks if they need bread, milk, coffee. Yesterday, the lady who lives above him posted a mask through every door in the building. Patrick’s is green and studded with little yellow ducks. 

The news is wrong: There’s a lot of kindness in the world. You just have to look sideways for it, not up.

Every day, Patrick marvels that everything looks the same when he opens his bedroom curtains. Behind the glass, breathing the same dull, stale air, it feels like the days pass in slow, headache-coloured blinks. He feels hungry, but not for food. 

It’s getting late. Patrick has friends he should text, but he doesn’t, because he doesn’t know what to say to them. Because he just keeps saying  _ I want this to be over, I miss you, _ over and over until his fingers feel itchy with it. He lies on his couch and watches Molly Ringwald give Judd Nelson her diamond earring and wonders if it’s normal to feel a clutch of medical anxiety that neither of them wash it off with Clorox. This seemed sexier when he was seventeen and not living through a global health crisis. He stares at the ceiling until it’s time to go back to sleep.

“It’s Saturday,” Patrick says, when Pete calls him. Pete hasn’t called him on weekends. Probably busy with his wife, or his girlfriend, or the sexy collective of beautiful women he keeps in his compound in Beverly Hills. Patrick thinks bitter thoughts about these women and he doesn’t even know if they exist. Patrick’s going to address it in therapy at some point.

“I figured we could hang out,” Pete says.

He’s dressed in a Metallica shirt, his hair loose and framing his irrationally handsome face. His thick mouth is quirked and quick to smiling, his teeth very white. He looks lovelier in street clothes; they lend a charming sense of vulnerability to him. Like Patrick is looking back through time at the teenage Pete he didn’t know. Pete lifts one shoulder in a slow shrug and spoons in a mouthful of what looks like Lucky Charms.

Patrick laughs at that, a sound that’s punched out of him. “Oh, totally. We should hit the town – Did you feel like the Marmont, or should we keep it low-key?”

“We can hang out here,” Pete says quickly, like he’s pouring cement into the cracks before Patrick can create them. Smoothing out the conversational comforter with quick flicks of his wrists. Being  _ nice.  _ “You have Netflix, right? Pick a movie. They added the John Hughes back catalogue — How about The Breakfast Club?”

“Already watched it,” Patrick says mulishly. 

“Okay, Sixteen Candles, then? Or we could do the Terminator movies — start at the beginning and skip number four, because it sucks  _ ass. _ Or if you’re in the mood for—”

Patrick fractures, right down the centre like the San Andreas fault. He makes a startled sound, an  _ injured _ sound, the physical swell of his want pushing hard against his ribs. This was a mistake. A huge fucking  _ mistake.  _ Pete bites off whatever he was about to suggest and looks at Patrick, concerned. 

“Don’t you have friends?” Patrick asks, before he can stop himself. It sounds awful, which isn’t his intention.

Pete reels back from the sting of it. His eyes turn dull. His wide mouth – already flat – curves down in the corners.  _ Ignore me, _ Patrick should say, but doesn’t,  _ I’m a fucking moron when I’m falling for someone and you’re so far out of my league we colonise different galaxies. _ Patrick’s of the space amoeba variety; a cosmic slug. Pete’s probably already developed a star fleet and colonised several dozen habitable planets, every one of them filled with hot people who want to suck his dick. Patrick is jealous, and that’s irrational because Pete does not, as far as he knows, have access to planets filled with hot, dick-sucking aliens. 

“Sorry,” Pete says. He looks hurt, and he shouldn’t. Not because Patrick wasn’t a dick — he was, he  _ so _ was — but because he shouldn’t  _ care _ what Patrick thinks at all. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I thought – No. It doesn’t matter. I’ll just—”

“Fuck,” Patrick says, burying his face in his hands. He breathes swampily into his palms for a minute or two, slicks his hot face with sweat and his own snotty grossness. 

“Patrick?” Pete says softly.

There is no  _ way _ he can make this worse than it already is by saying it out loud and, like, even if he  _ does, _ he’s almost certain he can’t get  _ fired  _ for this. He’s worked at Clandestine for five years without a single interaction with Pete fucking Wentz. Life can resume as normal. This is not the end of the world. 

He breathes his confession into his hands: “I like you, okay. And no, not like Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy. I like you like Sherlock and Watson. Jack and Sally. Fucking — Sal and Dean if Kerouac wasn’t a fucking  _ coward. _ I think — I like you a lot. And it’s okay if you don’t like me.”

“Oh,” Pete says. “Patrick, I—”

Patrick says, too quickly, “I’m struggling right now and I didn’t mean to take it out on you. But, please, don’t feel like you have to spend your Saturday night in a pity-hang on Zoom with your tech support.”

“I’m not  _ pity-hanging _ with my tech support,” Pete says, sounding bewildered. Patrick risks a glance from between his fingers and Pete  _ looks _ bewildered, too. Patrick is  _ bewildering _ his boss with his unnecessary declarations of his ridiculous, lonely  _ feelings. _

Patrick opens his mouth, gets as far as, “But, like,  _ clearly—” _ before Pete cuts him off.

“I  _ like  _ you, too. God. Idiot.”

“—that’s  _ exactly _ what you’re doing, and.” Patrick runs into that like a brick wall. His head jerks up, sharp as a puppet. “Wait,” he says. “What?”

“I like you,” Pete says again. “I like you so much, you wouldn’t even believe. I want to go on dates with you and watch shitty Netflix shows with you and eat spaghetti that I cook for you.”

“Look, two days ago you didn’t even know how to  _ make _ spaghetti—”

“And now I  _ do, _ because this hot tech support guy taught me how and I think I might be falling for him. But, like, don’t tell him. He gets really weird when I flirt with him.”

“Probably worried he’s going to spontaneously combust in the face of your ridiculous hotness,” Patrick mumbles to his chest. 

“What was that?” Pete frowns.

“Nothing,” Patrick says archly. 

“I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first call,” Pete says gently. “Your mouth is — Fuck, Patrick. I want to write  _ poems _ about your fucking  _ lips. _ I looked at that mouth and I thought, that’s a mouth that’s going to look fucking  _ empyreal _ wrapped around my dick.”

“I feel objectified,” Patrick bleats, sounding strangled. He doesn’t, though. Not really. He wants to hear Pete say these things for the rest of his  _ life, _ maybe. 

“Then I talked to you,” Pete says. “And I realised the mouth is just, like, sexy icing on a soulmate cake. I want to hold your hand like the Beatles, I want to be with you like Mr. Big, I want to fuck you like a KoRn song.”

Patrick chokes on nothing. “Jesus,” he wheezes. He thinks he might be having an out of body experience. Given the amount of time he spends staring at himself in Zoom, he’s not sure he’d know how to tell the difference. “Fuck, like. Yes? Yes to all of that. But, uh. What now?”

Pete rests a hand on his crotch, the lump of his dick just beneath hard and obvious as anything. He raises an eyebrow lazily and says, “I mean, I can think of something obvious.”

Patrick’s brain short circuits. He makes a small, unbidden sound at the back of his throat, like poprocks and coke it fizzes out of him, over his lips, sweet and sticky like sugar. He swallows down the rising ball of self-doubt and panic. He looks at Pete’s eyes, thick with longing. 

“I’m going to end this call,” Patrick says carefully, aware of the nature of company laptops and his meeting with Shane. “And I’m going to send you my number on Teams. We could Facetime, if you like.”

“Is your face all I’ll see?” Pete asks, salacious, his smile a wet thing dripping and sliding against his teeth and Patrick wants to bite it like ripe fruit, to sink his teeth into the centre and taste it, bursting sweet against his tongue. 

Patrick takes a deep breath and tilts the webcam, just a little. He’s outlined, hard and swollen in his sweatpants. “A trailer,” he says, sweating. His blood heats his skin, buzzing over his bones and into his boner, tingling like a transmission mast. “Call me back for the feature.” 

“Holy shit, Patrick.”

“Call me.”

He hangs up, feeling brave and reckless and horny. When he can no longer see Pete and Pete’s obvious erection, he starts feeling sad and desperate and stupid. There’s no way this is going to happen. He is an  _ idiot. _ He paces for an anxious forty-three seconds. His phone rings. It’s Pete, shirtless and shorts-less and tattooed-glorious, stretched out on a bed that seems to be made out of driftwood and covered in crisp white cotton sheets. Pete stands out like an exclamation point, his dick thick and swollen and red against his belly, bisecting a tattoo Patrick wants to bite. Patrick drinks in the ring of thorns around Pete’s neck, his tongue wet with sudden, urgent drool. This is a lot to take in. 

“Patrick Stumph,” Pete purrs, his eyes all blown and velvety pupil. “You have to show me  _ everything.” _

There’s no purpose in self-consciousness. Patrick reveals more pale and cinnamon-dusted skin than he has in years. He feels debauched, like a Victorian maiden, all creamy curves and thick pink dick in the tiny window at the bottom of the screen. Pete feasts on him, mouth moving like he can taste, his hand sliding to cup the eager weight of his own red-tipped erection. Pete issues instructions in a low and dangerous voice.  _ Touch, stroke, pinch there, press hard, rub, spread, let me see, you’re so gorgeous, another finger, you’re fucking wonderful, another, curl your hand like this, move your thumb a little, you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. _ Patrick dies a thousand times under Pete’s secondhand touch. He vibrates under his skin like his bones are trying to escape. He comes stuffed full of his own fingers, only when Pete allows it, and it feels like swimming through glue, like falling to pieces and pulling together, like crashing through space and touching the stars.

Patrick watches Pete come, gasping. He wants to kiss Pete’s flushed and fuckable mouth more than anything else he’s ever wanted in his life. 

“You’re so good,” he whispers, and Pete arches like a cat, licks come from his fingers and shows off. “So fucking good for me.”

They lie on their sides, rosy with recent orgasm, breathless and sweating with messy hair and matching smiles. Pete pulls a blanket over his head, cocoons himself in velvety darkness and Patrick does the same. Without the obvious difference in decor behind them, it feels like they’re in the same room. Patrick’s skin aches for the devilry of Pete’s golden touch. He tips his head and looks at Pete’s lovely face. “What happens now?” he asks, afraid of the answer. 

“When this is over, I’m going to take you out,” Pete says. 

Patrick huffs under his breath. “I hope you’re not just trying to get in my pants. You should know, I don’t put out on the first date.”

“We’ve had so many dates,” Pete argues, grinning. 

“You sexually harassed me at work. This is a power imbalance and I’m going straight to HR.”

“Maybe I can pay for your silence.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“I could pay you in kind,” Pete offers, a loose fist at the side of his mouth, his tongue sliding in and out of the pocket of his cheek. 

Patrick laughs, charmed and appalled. “You’re disgusting. But I like you. I like you so much.”

He yawns before Pete can reply, huge and grasping and surprising in its force. Pete laughs at him and says, “Wait until you see how well I knock you out when I can actually  _ touch _ you.”

Patrick says, “You’ll be lucky if I let you within ten feet of me with that kind of attitude, Wentz,” and Pete sticks out his tongue and Patrick laughs and they fall asleep with the call still live between them. It’s wonderful and intimate and bittersweet because Patrick wants to fall asleep tracing patterns on Pete’s chest, wants to find out what noise Pete makes if Patrick bites the soft-looking skin just behind his ear. 

Patrick sleeps all night and wakes up feeling happier than he has in weeks. There’s a text on his phone, a picture of Pete’s handsome penis and  _ i’m like a lawyer with how i’m always trying to get you off.  _ And Patrick sends back one of his own —  _ Me and You.  _

He drinks his coffee and looks toward Beverly Hills. This story is definitely going somewhere. 

**Author's Note:**

> Stay safe, my darlings. Look after each other and yourselves. I'm on tumblr @sn1tchesandtalkers if anyone wants to say hi :)


End file.
